Charging batteries after successful weekend

I had a few good contacts during the weekend.
Batteries didn't hold up as long as I thought.
Not too bad, but they had not been charged properly before my trip.
The LiPo held about 11.5V at start, and it's about 55% of total capacity.

So, Charging both my 2700mAh pack in the FT-817nd and my 5000mAh LiPo pack now.
Using internal charger in the radio - 2 x 12h at 110mAh charge.
Using an imax B6 LiPro charger at 1Ah for my 3S LiPo. Should take about 5h+

This is an original B6 charger.
I also have an B6 Copy. It does it ok, but in the end of the charge it pushes the voltage up to 4.23V.
This is 0.3V too much for LiPo max voltage. This is documented all over the net..
So, for emergency - no worries. There might be parameters in the charger to change to make it stop at 4.20V.

Temperature safety is important,

I have added a simple temperature sensor in the LiPo-Safe-charge bag to watch the temp.

I have also added it to our house surveillance with a alarm at 35C.

It should be no danger with only 1A charge. I like to start nice with new batteries, and ramp it up later.

Charging - 

 

Really unbalanced cells...
Charging didn't do better than this..

Do a balanced charge now, to see if it helps...
If not - going for discharging of the battery and then a new charge.

Is it hope... ?

No hope... !

I did a discharge..

No good - this one cell dropped below 3.5V after 2 hours..

So, this LiPo is no good!

After this discovery.. I got me 2 new batteries.

So, I now have 3 LiFe 13.2V batteries.

Ready for Field day! :-)

The biggest one is too powerful to bring on a plane(111Wh)

But, 2 x 55 Wh is ok - if 2 or more is travelling :-)

Next trip - FT-817nd with 2 x LiFe to FL in US... 

See you on the air!